Various things, mostly work related.

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Work, work, work. That’s pretty much been my life lately.

Things are changing at work as we go from groups of 4 people down to groups of three. Tonight we got our first semi-official taste of it. My group is decent although the woman in the group has gotten into verbal fights with a couple of other co-workers. But we’ve gotten along fine since we both came from the same area, Custom department, before entering Dual Core. There have also been a number of changes as the company tries to institute a standardize work for the area since it’s still real new. It’s also been a pain with some stress because if the previous shift doesn’t make enough stock the next shift has to play catch-up after standing around making the stock for themselves before they can completely make a golf ball to be transferred to another area.

Dual still rips the shit out of the tips of my fingers and I’m not alone. People walk out of there daily with blisters and shredded skin. It’s not uncommon to see three different layers of skin on my fingers.

A number of people want to bid out and return to the Custom Department. Their seniority kind of sucks so I don’t know if they’ll win the bids. Further, they are pretty much guaranteed to be laid off in the fall. It happens every year with Custom. Then those people have to bid on whatever jobs are available or risk not returning from lay-off for upwards of 6 months. And the people hoping to leave have some of the lowest seniority in the company. Even I have more seniority than most of them and I’m just hitting my two year mark in April.

I bid on a custom job because I like the job and the supervisor on the shift I bid on I probably my favorite boss in the place. I also don’t expect to win the bid. It was more of a lark.

I bought some really dark curtains this morning in hopes of keeping my room somewhat dark during the day. Anytime I wake up, despite a fully pulled down shade and some other implements to keep light out it’s bright as hell in my room. It could be contributing to my difficulty sleeping during the day.

I also bought another cactus today. Because I keep forgetting to water my plants cactuses are pretty much all I’ll buy. And my stupid cat actually ate part of one of the first two that I had purchased. It’s a really dumb cat.

My brother’s ex is at it again. Now she’s filed papers to move with the kids out of state. I guess she lost her job and is claiming she cannot find employment in our state. So she wants to move to Ohio, half the country away. And she’s apparently filed the papers on her own and is going without a lawyer. I hope my brother’s lawyer chews her up. Still, there is a chance my brother could lose and that would probably be the ending of seeing his kids except for like once a year. This could really backfire on my brother’s ex though should she win. As I understand it his child support would drop a ton load. And the ex is all about money, money, money. She has a new car but my nephew never has new clothes and he’s not in any kind of childcare either. So gee, I wonder where my brother’s child support goes…

I entered this contest held by a decently known comic book company about creating a super-heroine. The winner gets a three issue limited series. A number of people have sent in upwards of 5 or even 10 submissions. I sent in three. After reading a thread about the contest I don’t expect two submissions to go far. I’m taking a chance with the third submission as it involves my favorite homemade character. Depending on the legalities of the contest, I may have to share the character with the artist as far as creation and trademarking. This would kind of suck as I’ve drawn this character for years. But if it gets me into the biz…

I should know if I made the top ten on Feb 4th.

I’m finally getting to the point to where I can start rebuilding my bank account or save money for a trip to DragonCon Labor Day weekend. I’m leaning towards DragonCon first because I haven’t taken a trip anywhere in years. The real killer right now is heat, big surprise. It’s usually $250 a month right now. Not really that bad and lots less than other people but I’m a single income guy paying for a house and all the other bills tagged on to life. If I wasn’t working a lot of over-time I probably wouldn’t even be able to save any money at all this time of year. Or have any spending money either.

I’m feeling a bit guilty right now over not going to my friend’s brother’s funeral. I never met the brother but it would be more support for my friend. I hate funerals though. I hate corpses. I can still readily see the corpse of another buddy’s mother with just a quick thought. Yuck.

I had a couple of weird dreams lately including some really violent ones. One had me kicking this big, fat co-worker that I don’t care for in real life in the nuts. With him on his back grasping at his groin screaming in pain I then jumped on him and started pounding him on the face and head as hard as I could. Another dream had me trying to escape getting hurt during a PortaRican gang fight because I was the only white guy. This one guy I couldn’t shake but I got a gun from somewhere and ambushed from around a corner. I shot him in the head five times watching his head explode from point blank distance. I hope it’s just my head dealing with things heard and said during the day and that I’m not growing into some sort of homicidal maniac.

I missed the model railroad show and the Royal Rumble this past weekend to work. That really sucks. But I had taken the previous Sunday off and work is giving workers SuperBowl Sunday off except for volunteers for first shift. We are not forced to work Sundays because in MA you cannot work 7 days in a row unless it’s voluntary. I had wanted to take this past Sunday off for the Rumble but with the announcement of Super Bowl Sunday off I didn’t want to lose that much money because it would be three Sundays off in a row. I had planned to work Super Bowl Sunday because the game should be over before I would have had to leave for work.

I’m sure I’m forgetting some things like I’ve finished a couple of my novels from Christmas and whatnot but oh, well. I’ll just have to blog more often then.

Oh yeah, of course I’m rooting for the Patriots in this year’s Super Bowl. I love the Patriots and Tom Brady helped my own fantasy team to my league’s Super Bowl.

Treading water

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I’m a little depressed right now. My best internet friend girlfriend’s found the corpse of a person that hung themselves. Internet friend’s girlfriend is having a tough go of it since. I can’t stop thinking about it. I keep picturing the girlfriend coming around a corner and seeing that horrible image. I wish her the best. I get really mad when people commit suicide. I get even more mad when those that do inflict emotional damage on the people that are left behind.

My sleep is all screwed up again. I’m managing 6 to 7 and a ½ hours a day but it’s restless. I rarely feel rested when I get up. In back to back days I got to sleep after twelve noon and then 1 pm. Ugh. I like to be asleep by 10:30am. So I have to try and sleep later into the night which really sucks. I get up and have maybe an hour or so of free time before work.

I finished two of my Christmas present books. One was the first Harry Potter book and the other was an Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter novel. Both were pretty good although the ending to Anita Blake was lukewarm. I want to start reading my other books but having just read over 680+ pages has left me less than willing to commit to another 320+ page book so quickly. I do have a stack of unread comics though.

Stunning upset to me in football. The Chargers beat the Colts. And the top three players for the Chargers are injured. They may play but shouldn’t be 100%. The New England Patriots have almost no reason not to win and advance to the Super Bowl.

Not a whole lot to write about. I keep working to earn money towards hopefully going to DragonCon later this year and rebuild my savings account. Still, it only feels like I’m treading water despite working 20 days straight. With February being so short and a heating bill that’s over two hundred dollars there’s pretty much no money for me in either January or February. So March is when I’m eyeing as a time to earn money to save for things. At least I should be getting a $100 bonus from work soon that I plan to spend on me instead of bills.

Crazy ass Loooong dreams

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I think the following was actually four dreams or more. There are some spots I can’t fully recall and that’s where I suspect I may have woken up or something causing the dream to end or switch gears. The helicopter ones may have some elements that I recall but not in what order. All of the following happened in one night of dreaming.

In one dream I was on a road near a river. This seemed like something in Florida where the road was higher than the river by like ten feet. The road was fenced off from the river and the road and river ran parallel across from an airport. Something flew a front piece or bow of an aircraft carrier over the river. It was a prefabricated piece. Then back to back weird helicopters flew over as escort protection. They checked me out for a few seconds before carrying on. The helicopters were tan and white with Air Force plastered on them. They were weird in that they looked retro but were modern. The cockpit had a large plexiglass front. Along the side behind the cockpit was an open air sitting area for gunnery guys complete with a huge heavy machine gun. This station looked like a topless soda can with a machine gun sticking out of it.

In the second dream I was at mom and dad’s place. I was walking along the road nearing the Jahns and Clarkin’s houses when one of those helicopters appeared. I called them marines this time around. They were checking me out again. I had a tall white bucket with me that was about 2 feet tall. It was full of dirt but their sensors said it was French! I know this makes no sense but that’s what happened. It was like they were treating like a bomb or something. The helicopter which seemed fairly small for a multi-man vehicle close up landed on a tree. This tree was small next to the other trees. It had only a 6 inch diameter trunk. It was leafless and its trunk split into a Y-shaped form. The helicopter landed/wedged itself in the y-shape. I remember thinking that that marine pilot was really good. They just watched me until I went back up the road to mom and dad’s house.

Next I was in the kitchen. Another helicopter came by. Now there were two in the area. From the road area about 6 to 8 marine investigators were mulling around the backyard and wood pile. They had what looked like metal detectors and devices like that and were sometimes in mom’s flower beds. I guess they were looking for contraband. They didn’t hassle us. It felt more like a show of force to intimidate us.

I went outside and hopped onto a go cart by the cellar that looked like the dragster race car from the old movie ‘Munster Go Home’. The marine people were finally leaving. It had been hours since they first arrived. Some lingered about though. I blasted by the wood pile and barn and down the trail that leads to the backfields. I stopped seeing a teenager by the old chicken coup cellar hole. He was smoking a cigarette. I think he had a go cart too. He seemed harmless and just trying to hide as he smoked. I headed off and another kid showed up to join him. The first kid’s mom showed up and then a bunch more people all by the rock bridge. Then dad showed up. Worthless discussion started up. The mom was complaining about her house. The backfield area passed where our land stopped had been cleared and turned into a small housing development area like the kind they use to make after World War II. For some reason, I often dream about this happening to that area. The houses looked decent but were cheaply built. Apparently these people were a bunch of people living in that development.

I hopped back into the go cart and started to go through the crowd forcing them to move when my brother Greg showed up. He gave me shit about leaving the crowd of people but I eventually left anyways.

I can’t remember much else after that.

Another dream had me as an intern at a hospital. The doctor teaching me was a fetish woman I’ve seen on the internet. Her name is Heike. She’s also a dom and was one in the dream but kept it secret. But here she was really just a hot doctor. I knew her secret though but didn’t tell her. We got along great and I was enchanted by her. She was thoughtful and funny as well as being a patient teacher. We walked around the hospital discussing patients. We both looked professional in our white coats. I may have even been wearing a tie! She was dressed otherwise in black.: a high neck sweater, pencil skirt, hosery, and pumps. Even her glasses had black frames. Her long blond hair was free and done to almost her waist.

I don’t recall much else.

Next I was sent or had to go to another hospital. I had to drive there but it wasn’t far, maybe 10 minutes. I hadn’t seen this city before and it doesn’t exist in real life but I knew where to go. It was a nice climate and sunny and warm and I’m sure it was on the west coast of the U.S. I certain I was driving a convertible with the top down.

Next I was a patient in the hospital in a sort of emergency room. I was on a bed but fully clothed and I seemed to be fine. It was like I was waiting for someone. The place had a lot of glass walls and glass sliding doors and you could see all over.

Dr. House from the TV show House was there. He was helping the teenaged son or daughter of a large black man. This man was big and round like an offensive lineman from the NFL. He had a tight beard, maybe a goatee and a close cropped haircut. He was sweating a lot and the beads of sweat covering his head were massive like large rain drops. His child was dying and he was really angry. He threatened House until House was in a chair and cupping his face in his hands and crying.

I got up and walked around. I saw a girl I know from the comic forum You’ll All Be Sorry. I’ll call her doc girl because she’s a doctor in real life. There was another lady there that we both knew. I think this second lady was also from YAB but in real life she really doesn’t exist. She was in her early thirties and was slim with cottony shoulder length blond hair. She was on a table in a room apparently waiting to be examined or something. This giant room we were all in reminded me more of a large newspaper room like the kind you see in movies. It has tons of glass walls and glass cubicals and you could pretty see from one end to the other. I’m guessing there were some curtains one could pull for privacy in the examining rooms. The room was bigger than a football field and a ton of people were milling about all consumed in their own affairs.

Then the smaller room where the second woman was blew up. Not sure of the cause but flames roared up from the floor and was a thick column that looked like a geyser. It hit the ceiling and curled back down on itself. Everything was red tinged like an erupting volcano. The woman had flames curling back down on her but she wasn’t moving at all. Doc girl, another person and I ran to help the woman. It was very dangerous and we should’ve died outright or suffered horrendous burns ourselves but we were barely scathed. I went to slide the woman off the table as we cringed by it but doc girl said no. We needed gloves because that somehow protected the woman’s burnt skin. We started to look around and someone found some sort of black blanket that seemed like a sheet of plastic. We slid the woman on and lowered her to the floor while flames roared around us. Doc girl and I crouched down to help her. Doc girl was in a white doctor’s coat and either red or black slacks. She had on black slip on shoes with a small strap and buckle across the top of the toe area for extra design. She was griping about wearing heels that day. Her heels were maybe one inch high and a block heel. I told her her shoes were ugly.

Doc girl told me I needed to get marker cones to help the woman. I asked like the huge road construction cones but she said small ones like a foot high. I ran off to find some. The only place I had seen some was in the corner supply area next to the bed I was originally in. This was some distance from the exploding room. I found some there and headed back but now doc girl was there and in her own emergency room bed. Seems she was sick to start with and had already saved the woman during the time I was gone. She told me to find the woman and place the cones on the storage area between the legs of the bed. Otherwise, people would remove or steal her personal belongings. I did this and later left the hospital.

The hospital overlooked a bay that was maybe a half mile away. A couple of huge bridges traversed the bay. The bridges were fairly low to the water looking like a large rolling hill. There were two side by side for each direction of traffic and each had like 6 lanes. The bridges were more wide than tall. They looked like larger versions of the ones I’ve seen in Groton, CT.

The city was a sprawling city of at least several hundred thousand if not a million people. The area felt like the west coast. The buildings were mainly one or two floors with taller ones along the coast. The far coast of the bay seemed fairly high from the water like it was a small mountain range or a cliff. There was a yellowish glow and lots of shadows as if the sun had just crested the horizon. Things were beginning to bustle like it was just before morning rush hour. I saw more marine helicopters from the other dreams in the distance flying over the two bridges.

A guy looking like actor James Woods was there and some others too. We went down to the dock for some reason. The dock was like a topless garage not some wooden planks. Once there Woods was handed pictures and then me a few moments later. I got like 10 pictures to look at. I could see what Woods was looking at but could only clearly see when I got mine. The pictures were from doc girl. They were like 8’ x 10’ or larger on glossy paper. Some were different sizes than others. About half of my pictures were of the woman we rescued. They were operation pictures taken from weird angles like looking up at the table. The pictures were frighteningly graphic. The woman was covered in blood and lots of her skin was blackened and scratched up from the explosion and fire. She was cut open like an autopsy. She was cut open wide and everything exposed from the base of her neck to below her navel. It was horrific and I was in shock. I was crying over them traumatized over the pain and suffering of this woman. To doc girl’s credit, the woman would apparently survive and have a full recovery! I couldn’t see how considering half or more of her bodily organs had been exposed. The other pictures I don’t recall but I think they were of a ship ferry.

The guys and I then got a history of the ship ferry before us. It seemed like it could hold 20 cars or so and had a deck and a half deck above the floor deck. Somehow doc girl was related to this and I think she knew that the boat had originally belonged to Marvel Comics. The white boat had black trim and was around 10 to 15 years old. It could still float but risked sinking at any time. I can’t really recall the history but it was at one time very safe after a revolutionary safety device had been installed after a near sinking. That’s when it became a car ferry and was one of the safest boats for years. It had some sort of inflatable inner hull that became a standard for boats for years after that. Then it was outdated and unsafe.

Now the boat had been restructured to have several more decks each about 6 and a half feet high. People barely had any head room. I saw two decks and they were filled with human sized action figures. I think they were doc girl’s. They looked like Marvel’s Kree alien race which look just like men except for blue skin. They wore form fitting white outfits. The shoulders had color highlights and there was a circle on the center of the chest. These color highlights were either sea green or magenta but never a mix of both.

The boat took off for a short voyage. I may have been on it. I think I was at least part of the time before launch. These trips were occasional but the boat could sink at any time.

The dream ended as the boat pulled out of the dock area which was like a watery driveway between tall buildings.

It took about 45 minutes to jot down the freehand notes and about the same to type all this up. Ugh!

The New Year

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The New Year. Well, the new year by a calendar at least. It’s still winter for several more months.

The new year has started off subdued which is just the way I like it. New Year’s Eve went as I predicted.

New Year’s Eve I went to my buddy, D’s, place. I was concerned because when I go over when they are drinking I usually take shit for not drinking. I don’t drink. I maybe have a shot a year. I often get verbally sexually harassed because a couple of the guys cheat on their girls or go for strippers and usually those strippers seem to have drug problems. Wreslting also takes place between guys in their late 20’s early 30’s. And finally, when alcohol is involved there is usually a near fist fight.

I arrived around 8 pm with the intent of leaving if the crowd got too drunk. Some people where there and a beer pong table was set up. It’s a drinking game involving tossing ping pong balls into your opponent’s beer cups to make them drink that beer. It actually looked fun if I was a drinker.

There were two crews there, the drinkers and the comics crew. The comics crew drank some but mainly sat around watching Monday Night RAW wrestling. Then we broke out some wrestling games for the Xbox 360. There were some homemade dips and a homemade taco salad and I found both quite good. I’m not huge into trying new foods because people seemed to get pissed when I don’t flaunt over their family recipe. But these I found quite tasty and let my friend know it.

I found a small shot like bottle of licorice drink in the freezer and got the okay to have it. Yeah, it tasted like crap making me shiver and wince but I did finish it… eventually. There aren’t many drinks I’ve actually liked. I probably dislike 99% of available alcoholic beverages. But a prediction came true. I was given some shit later on for not drinking enough. It wasn’t a surprise.

RAW and Xbox 360 were decent and enjoyable. I haven’t seen RAW in forever. Basic cable doesn’t carry it. At one point D grabbed his best friend and started wrestling with him. Best friend got hit in the nose by accident by D and it was a pretty good shot apparently. Best friend was pissed! He stormed off to the bathroom to check his schnowzer for blood. He was fairly subdued the rest of the night. I suppose the mother of his baby puking after taking her first hits ever of marijuana didn’t help matters. LOL!

I was mildly sexually harassed. I think D made one comment, two at most. That wasn’t too bad.

I’m happy to say there was no near fist fight this time around. The drinking crew seemed to be a happy dunk crew mostly which was very refreshing. The last big drinking night was made to sound like this grand escapade but when viewed with reason there was multiple near fist fights between friends and some with strangers, near vandalism, puking in rented cars and on the steps of homes and other ‘wonderful’ times. Yeah, I don’t miss much when I skip out on these drinking night out’s.

So I had a decent time at my buddy’s although this entry doesn’t really sound like I did. I headed out around 12:15am which was about 90 minutes to two hours later than I had planned.

It snowed again today and since I didn’t go anywhere and had no desire to go anywhere I was happy to have it. It was sort of magical to watch. Since we’ve gotten decent amounts of snow the past weeks there’s like 3 to 5 inches of snow everywhere and it’s still nice and white. It’s always the coolest to me when it’s snowing when there’s a bunch of snow already on the ground.

I rearranged the living room today. I moved my brother’s couch around so more people can sit and watch the big screen TV. Probably the only draw back is there is less room to play the Wii. But my brother’s couch is a corner couch shaped like an ‘L’ where mine is just a couch. It’s a fairly major realignment for the living room but it seems like a good move.

I woke up from sleep last night dreaming I was suffocating. Either I had this same dream before or I had it multiple times last night. It was quiet unnerving since in the dream my throat had closed up to the point of choking and losing consciousness. I did wake up to find my throat and mouth quite dry. I haven’t used the main humidifier in my room that past two nights so I think that was the main motivation for the dreams. Still, it wasn’t cool.

My niece got me a game for the Wii called Manhunt 2. It’s about as violent as a game gets. You murder people left and right. So far I’ve killed people with my fist, a shank, a needle and a sledge hammer. The graphics are quite intense too with lots of blood and gore. In the first stage of the game you have to sneak by two mental patients in their cells. I was unsuccessful so the first one peed on me and the second one threw shit at me. Um,…yeah. Still, it’s kind of enjoyable all the killing and all.

I’m forgetting a few things I wanted to write about but this is long enough as is.